I am reading an interesting biography right now…

This Austrian couple is struggling to create a family. Nine months after their marriage a son was born but lived less than 6 months. The mother, already pregnant when the boy died, gave birth to a daughter four months later. The child lived for just 6 days. The mother was soon pregnant once more, and less than a year later gave birth to another daughter. The infant lived for a little over two months. Another daughter was born a year later and that daughter went on to live a long life. But the couple’s heartache was not yet over. A son born sixteen months later lived just three months and a daughter born the following year died at seven weeks. Six children in less than six years, and only one lived to see a first birthday.

This mother was an exhausted woman, now thirty-five years of age, resigned to almost constant child bearing, followed by the infinite sadness of seeing tiny coffins bearing each child away. Now a seventh child was on the way. The mother gave birth to her seventh, and final, child at eight o’clock on the evening of 27 January 1756. A son was born.

His name was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

(Paraphrased from "Mozart - The Man Revealed" by John Suchet)